When Mum Calls, I Come

Salty gravy still clung to her tongue when Mum called from the kitchen. Kavya had kept her baptism towel folded beneath the mat for a week, because the faint ring on the cloth marked the day the water touched her forehead. Each evening she smoothed it flat, and each morning she hid it again. She checked it before school too. Tonight Mum stood in the doorway holding the basin and said the towel needed washing. Kavya's fingers closed over the cloth and would not open. Then she carried it to the sink and laid it under the tap, because Mum was still standing there with her hand out. Mum squeezed the soap and turned the water warm. The tap ticked while it warmed. "The day is in you, not in the cloth," she said. Kavya watched the suds rise and slide away, and she leaned her shoulder against Mum's arm until the last grey swirl went down the drain.